The Chouans

* * * * *

“So this is the life I craved,” exclaimed Mademoiselle de Verneuil, when she was left alone with Francine.  “No matter how fast the hours go, they are to me like centuries of thought.”

Suddenly she took Francine’s hand, and her voice, soft as that of the first red-throat singing after a storm, slowly gave sound to the following words:—­

“Try as I will to forget them, I see those two delicious lips, that chin just raised, those eyes of fire; I hear the ‘Hue!’ of the postilion; I dream, I dream,—­why then such hatred on awakening!”

She drew a long sigh, rose, and then for the first time looked out upon the country delivered over to civil war by the cruel leader whom she was plotting to destroy.  Attracted by the scene she wandered out to breathe at her ease beneath the sky; and though her steps conducted her at a venture, she was surely led to the Promenade of the town by one of those occult impulses of the soul which lead us to follow hope irrationally.  Thoughts conceived under the dominion of that spell are often realized; but we then attribute their pre-vision to a power we call presentiment,—­an inexplicable power, but a real one,—­which our passions find accommodating, like a flatterer who, among his many lies, does sometimes tell the truth.